A break from underdeveloped congressmen and twitter, if you will.

A candidate who carries their own home state and that of their vice presidential companion nearly always wins the big prize. Since 1900, this has failed exactly three times- 1916, 1976, and 2008. In each of these cycles (correct me if I am mistaken, of course), the party had both their Presidential and Vice Presidential candidate from, at the time, their party's "safe" states.

Condition #1 of this exercise:
Every announced Republican candidate (and for fun, some who have not declared but could jump in) wins their home turf.

Condition #2 of this experiment:
Their VP choice carries their home turf.

Note- moving forward, this is not a discussion of “but X will never carry their home state.” The ground rules, again, are Conditions #1 and #2 are absolutely true in the exercise.

Condition #3- either Presidential or Vice Presidential candidate MUST have won an election within their home state (preferrably state wide, though a popular congressman can carry their own weight into the game). We are already stretching the boundaries of reality with this exercise, need to set a few.
Oh, almost forgot.

There is one last condition.
Every candidate STARTS with all of the McCain 2008 states:
more...

Posted by: CAC at 07:40 AM | Comments (82)
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This is a gaffe? I thought this was the mainstream pro-life position.

Sure, it makes logical sense to throw an abortion-seeking teenaged girl in jail, too, but people who go around saying things like "I want to lock up knocked-up teenaged girls" tend not to get elected.

One of those many cases where the strongest proponents for a cause wind up almost insuring their cause will never actually prevail, because they refuse to offer the public anything less than the most politically-unpalatable policy choice on the menu.

This is kind of the standard line offered by most pro-life politicians. It just is. Go poll every pro-life politician and see how many endorse the "logical" position that both abortion-provider and abortion-seeker should be imprisoned.

Gay Marriage: You know how they did gay marriage, and got it to the point where a recent polls says just over 50% support gay marriage?

The "frog will not jump out of the water if you gradually raise the temperature" thing.

First they talked nonstop about civil unions and of eradicating any distinction in the law between gay sex and straight sex.

When people said "This will lead to gay marriage," they said, "Don't be absurd, no it won't."

Then, having removed all legal distinctions between a gay coupling and a straight coupling, and gotten the public to be fairly supportive of civil unions, then they began saying civil unions were in fact unconstitutional in distinguishing between gay and straight unions and only actual marriage could suffice.

They didn't start off -- at least not the ones who knew what they were doing -- turning the water up to scalding. First they turned it to 70 degrees, then 80, then 90...

Yes, I mean Centigrade. Though it does strike me that a frog would die in 80 degree C water but let's not get bogged down in my stupid details.

So where are we? We're in a situation where the public likes saying, as a gestural matter, that it's anti-abortion, but the majority position seems to actually be pro-choice with exceptions.

Abortion isn't even illegal yet, except in a few states and in a few cases. It's illegal for almost nobody.

But it's a smart move to make the most sympathetic players in this sad game the targets of criminal incarceration from the jump?

No, it's not smart. It's dumb.

It's almost actually being strongly pro-abortion in actual effect, because that's the side this position winds up aiding.

Kermit Gosnell: Someone brought this fiend up in the comments.

That's where we are. Where it's still considered politically controversial and politically courageous to incarcerate guy running a human slaughterhouse.

That's currently "controversial."

But sure, let's right out of the gates go after 15 year old girls. That'll fly.

Posted by: Ace at 07:21 AM | Comments (125)
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GLOW, the Gorgeous Ladies of Weiner.

He was following a lot of cute young things. Some of whom (and not just the Comely Coed) had announced crushes on him. Like the porn actress, for instance. Who got a DM from him. And said she was physically attracted to him.

Suspicious? Yes of course, and this is the thing: Because that sort of mixing between men and women who could be attracted to each other is a suspicious, and dangerous, proposition, most people try to avoid that sort of thing.

And when they don't avoid it? Bad things tend to happen, because people don't really think very much once the sex drive engages and basically takes over the entire brain.

@Stranahan interviews a girl (his daughter?) on the swirling controversy of whether she took the cookies. more...

Posted by: Ace at 07:05 AM | Comments (160)
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All buttoned-up men are weighty. All buttoned-up men are believed in. Whether or no the reserved and never-exercised power of unbuttoning, fascinates mankind; whether or no wisdom is supposed to condense and augment when buttoned up, and to evaporate when unbuttoned; it is certain that the man to whom importance is accorded is the buttoned-up man.

[Update: Andy] There's some discussion in the comments about the Mac Defender malware targeted at the Mac Safari browser. Pajamas Media has been having an issue with it too and put up a good post on how to deal with it.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:52 AM | Comments (311)
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